Marvel Rivals developers in the US are saying they’ve been laid off, despite launching a game with more than 20 million players

Marvel Rivals is a big hit—the first real challenger to the long-time hero shooter big dog Overwatch. Yet amidst that success, with more than 200,000 people playing on Steam alone right now, game director Thaddeus Sasser says he and the rest of the Marvel Rivals development team in the US have been laid off.

“This is such a weird industry,” Sasser wrote on LinkedIn. “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games…and were just laid off!”

Level designer Jack Burrows said the same thing in a separate post. “Welp, just got laid off from my job working on Marvel Rivals with NetEase,” Burrows wrote. “Was an enormous pleasure to work with my American coworkers who join me in this sad culling. Just couldn’t dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig.”

And that’s really the heart of the matter: Why would NetEase do this? Marvel Rivals is a major hit and, as reported by Chinese site GameLook (via 80lv), it seems to be making a lot of money—an estimated $136 million in its first month alone. At the same time, the game is still finding its footing, and as we saw recently with Multiversus, a strong start can fade quickly if the team behind it doesn’t stay on top of things. The core Marvel Rivals development team is presumably based in China but even so, cutting off an entire studio—including the game director—at this very early, game-is-a-hit stage is baffling.

Some have speculated that this may have been the plan all along: Get Marvel Rivals spun up, and then cut the team operating it down to the bone. NetEase has been dialing back its US plans in recent months: In November 2024, it ended funding for recently-founded studios Worlds Untold, launched in 2023 by BioWare veteran Mac Walters, and in January it pulled the plug on Jar of Sparks, founded by Halo and Destiny 2 veteran Jerry Hook in 2022. In August 2024, NetEase also reportedly laid off most employees at Ouka Studios, the developer of Visions of Mana, before the game even came out.

NetEase isn’t shy about cutting back where and when it deems necessary, in other words, but even in that light this is a weird one. I’ve reached out to NetEase for comment and will update if I receive a reply.